Dana Wynter

Dana Wynter, who died on May 5 aged 79, was a German-born actress who grew up
in England but found fame in America as a creature from another planet – in
the celebrated sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

6:17PM BST 09 May 2011

A dark-haired, pale-skinned beauty, Dana Wynter (playing Becky Driscoll) was more than qualified to scream and clutch the arm of her love interest, Dr Miles Bennell, as they fled (unsuccessfully, in her case) the extraterrestrial scourge. Filming got under way in 1955, at the height of Joseph McCarthy-inspired hysteria about Reds under the bed.

Dana Wynter and her co-star Kevin McCarthy on the film's poster

“It was just supposed to be a plain, thrilling kind of picture,” Dana Wynter recalled in 1999. “That was what Allied Artists thought they were making.” But after its release in 1956 it soon became clear that the plot, in which a small-town doctor learns that the population of America is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates grown in pods, was being credited with a double meaning.

Both the director, Don Siegel, and the scriptwriter, Dan Mainwaring, denied any such subtext. But Dana Wynter insisted that the cast “realised that we were making an anti-ism picture. Anti-fascism, anti-communism, all that kind of thing.” Certainly it is hard to avoid the hint of a political message when the leading man, desperately seeking to alert his fellow Americans to the looming menace, turns to camera and shouts: “They’re here already. You’re next.” Either way, the film was an instant box-office hit.

Dagmar Winter was born in Berlin on June 8 1931, the daughter of a surgeon, Peter Winter. Her family soon moved to England. A few years later her parents divorced and she moved with her father to Southern Rhodesia. Following graduation from a private school she trained in Medicine at Rhodes University in South Africa. She also tried her hand at amateur theatre there, and returned to England in the early 1950s to take up acting seriously.

During a performance at the Hammersmith Apollo she was spotted by an American agent and a few bit parts followed, including in Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951), co-starring Diana Dors, and The Crimson Pirate (1952), with Burt Lancaster as the swashbuckling hero. In November 1953, having changed her name to Dana Wynter, she set out to try her luck in Hollywood.

There, despite initial disappointment in film, she stayed to carve out a career for herself in television. In March 1955 she won a Golden Globe Award for “Most Promising Newcomer”, and was placed under contract with Twentieth Century Fox, making her debut in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Despite excellent reviews Dana Wynter was unable to replicate her success, appearing mostly in war movies – such as D-Day the Sixth of June (1956) – and on television. She appeared in series including Hart to Hart, The Rockford Files and Magnum P.I., returning to the big screen for two cameo roles: in Airport, which reunited her with Burt Lancaster, and in Triangle (both 1970).

From 1978 to1980 she played Jill Daly in the soap opera Bracken, with Gabriel Byrne. It began her love affair with Ireland, where she bought a house in Co Wicklow. Her final role was as Raymond Burr’s wife in The Return of Ironside (1993).

Dana Wynter was married to the Hollywood lawyer Greg Bautzer. She is survived by her son.